Residents of Indore who had chased away doctors a few months back who had conducted contact tracing drive in the COVID-19 hotspot at Indores Tatpatti Bhakal neighbourhood, are flooding the doctors mobile phones with messages seeking health advice.

On 1st April, a mob screaming maaro-maaro had chased out Dr Trupti Katdare and Dr Zakiya Sayyed from the Indores neighbourhood. Now, 9 months later, Dr Katdares phone is full with messages from residents of the same locality asking for advice. While Indore accounts for 22 percent of the states COVID-19 count with 53,910 cases, the neighbourhood has not reported any new positive case of coronavirus in the last seven months.

As the coronavirus pandemic arose, one man Abdul Rafeeq, aged 69 years, died a day after testing positive and many in the neighbourhood has attended his funeral. The two doctors were allotted to carry out contact tracing drive and they had quarantined 70 high-risk people as more 138 were tested positive in the following two days. Mohammad Sajid, a resident of Tatpatti Bhakal, who had tested positive for COVID-19 with six of his family members had lost his brother-in-law to it in March, admitted that it was due to misunderstanding. He said that people were dreaded that Muslims were only being detained and were put in quarantine centres without cause. Also, no one understood what quarantine mean.

Dr Katdare said that after the 70 people who were in quarantine came back to their homes and told their experiences, then the attitudes started to change. People slowly started to respond and later, few of them gifted plants. The district collector also said that there wasn’t any need for lockdown in the neighbourhood, as many people have developed the required immunity.

Source: The Logical Indian